Emile the citizen? A reassessment of the relationship between private education and citizenship in Rousseau’s political thought

Abstract

It is often said that the claims of man and citizen are irreconcilable in the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This view, most famously articulated by Judith Shklar, holds that the making of a man and the making of a citizen are to be understood as rival enterprises or competing alternatives. This reading has recently been challenged by Frederick Neuhouser. He argues that one can make a man and a citizen, but only if the education of each is performed in the absence of the other. In his view, Emile is raised to be a man first (Books I–IV) before his subsequent instruction in citizenship (Book V). This paper challenges both views. I argue that the making of man and citizen are, in principle, neither rival enterprises nor competing alternatives, and that although Neuhouser is indeed correct to argue for a successive system of education, the making of a citizen is not completed in Emile, but extends into the Social Contract. His account diminishes the crucial role the Lawgiver plays in the fashioning of citizens capable of discerning the general will. I show that although raising individuals under a system of private instruction does not preclude their transformation into citizens but makes such a transformation possible, it is on its own incapable of making citizens.

Keywords

Rousseau citizenship Emile general will Lawgiver

The claims of man and citizen are often considered irreconcilable in Rousseau’s philosophy. According to Morgenstern (1996: 154), for example, ‘political and personal authenticity will admit of no divided loyalties’; individuals in Rousseau’s philosophy ‘can be either individual men or citizens, but not both’. Similarly, Gourevitch (1997: xxix–xxx) writes that being a man and being a citizen ‘make for fundamentally different economies of the soul, and fundamentally different ways of life’. The ‘competing claims of the two ways of life and the tensions between them’, which Rousseau illustrates in one way through the distinctive educations for man and the citizen, ‘is the central theme of his work, and it is the organizing principle of his writings’.

Likewise, Shklar (1969: 5) argues that a ‘strikingly novel’ aspect of Rousseau’s thought lies in ‘his insistence that one must choose between the two models’ of man and the citizen if one ‘is to escape’ from the ‘disorientation and inner disorder’ caused by living in modern society. These afflictions partly result from ‘our mixed condition, our half natural and half social state’, which attempts to harmonise two incompatible modes of existence. Natural man is a ‘numerical unity, the absolute whole which is relative only to itself or its kind’. The citizen, in contrast, is ‘only a fractional unity dependent on the denominator; his value is determined by his relation to the whole, which is the social body’ (E I, 164/OC 4, 249). To forestall the development of discord within, one must decide between a private education directed ‘against society, in isolation from and rejection of all prevailing customs and opinions’ and a public education that allows one to ‘lose oneself in a collectivity’ (Shklar, 1969: 5).¹ In short, one can make a man or a citizen, but never both.

This view has recently been challenged by Neuhouser (2008: 20–24, chapters 5, 7). He points out that Rousseau’s most explicit statement on this issue contains an important but often overlooked qualification. In that statement, Rousseau rejects not the possibility of reconciling man and citizen in a single individual, but the simultaneity of educating an individual to be both. As he describes it, when one is ‘forced to combat nature or the social institutions, one must choose between making a man or a citizen, for one cannot make both at the same time’ (E I, 163/OC 4, 248, emphasis added).

The reconciliation of man and citizen is possible, but only if the education of each is performed in the absence of the other. Neuhouser (2008: 20, 172) suggests that ‘Rousseau alerts us to the existence of “two contrary forms of instruction” not with the purpose of identifying Emile with one of the alternatives – an education that produces hommes’ – but rather to ‘define its aim as the overcoming of that opposition’. Such an overcoming finds its solution in the creation of a successive system of education that proceeds first with the ideal of man and later with the ideal of the citizen. This, Neuhouser asserts, corresponds to the education of Emile, who is raised to be a man (Books I–IV) before his subsequent instruction in citizenship (Book V).

Put differently, the final goal of Emile’s education

is to produce a ‘man-citizen’, an individual who possesses the capacities required to embrace the general will of his polity as his own – the virtue essential to citizenship – while at the same time embodying a certain version of the ideal of self-sufficiency that defines men: the freedom to ‘see with one’s own eyes’, to ‘feel with one’s own heart’, to be governed only by ‘one’s own reason’ rather than being compelled always to conduct oneself, or to judge, as others see fit (Neuhouser, 2008: 20–21).

On Neuhouser’s view, the moi humain is not entirely crushed by the demands of citizenship, but is instead suitably revised and embodied by the moi commun. This version of independence is compatible with, and indeed a part of, the modern ideal of citizenship as developed by Rousseau, but not with the ancient ideals of Rome and Sparta. For Neuhouser, the ‘common characteristic’ of citizenship in Rome, Sparta and even Plato’s Republic is to be found in the ‘circumstance that members of the state think of themselves first as citizens – as Romans or Spartans – and only secondarily (or perhaps not at all) as individuals’. This, he maintains, differs from Rousseau’s republican vision. And from this distinction, he concludes that ‘when Rousseau denies that Emile can be educated both as man and citizen “at the same time,” he is asserting the incompatibility of Emile’s education not with citizenship tout court but only with citizenship in its ancient form’ (Neuhouser, 2008: 20).

Neuhouser’s argument is certainly persuasive. It clarifies the almost sudden turn in Rousseau’s thought where he unexpectedly suggests the possibility of fashioning men and citizens despite his initial repudiation of this possibility (E I, 165–166/OC 4, 251). This said, what is less clear is whether citizen formation is fully realised at the end of Emile. Contrary to Neuhouser’s remarks, there is little evidence to suggest that Emile becomes a fully formed citizen upon completing his education – one capable of willing the general will of his republic. Upon returning from a two-year tour of Europe designed to verse the young pupil in ‘all matters of government, in public morals, and in maxims of State of every kind’, Emile responds to the tutor’s request for his observations by asking ‘what difference does it make to me where I am?’ And as Jean-Jacques himself declares, Emile will ‘on leaving my hands … be neither magistrate nor soldier nor priest. He will in the first place, be a man’ (E V, 649, 666; I, 166/OC 4, 836, 857, 251).

This description of Emile also brings into question Neuhouser’s other claim that Rousseau’s model of citizenship differs from its ancient counterpart in that members of the latter think of themselves first and perhaps only as citizens. It is true that Rousseau’s citizen is partially constituted by the self-sufficiency definitive of man, yet it must be emphasised that he does often speak of identity in terms of place. Not only does Rousseau criticise he who ‘wants to preserve the primacy of the sentiments of nature’ within a civil order as one who ‘does not know what he wants’, he also criticises the gradation where ‘each man is first of all himself, and then a magistrate, and then a citizen’ as one that is ‘directly opposed to that which the social order demands’ (E I, 164, V, 657/OC 4, 249, 845; SC III: ii, 170–171/OC 3, 401, emphasis added). In Rousseau’s ideal republic, members ought to see themselves first as citizens, just as in Sparta and Rome.

Below, I argue that although Neuhouser is indeed correct to argue for a successive system of education, the making of a citizen is not completed in Emile, but extends into the Social Contract. His account diminishes the crucial role the Lawgiver (Législateur) plays in the fashioning of citizens capable of discerning the general will. An important aspect of the Lawgiver’s work lies in ‘changing human nature; of transforming each individual, who by himself is a perfect and solitary whole, into a part of a larger whole from which this individual receives, in a sense, his life and his being’ (SC II: vii, 155/OC 3, 381). This transformation, fundamental to the making of citizens, is not performed by the tutor. Yet only natural man (or those approximating that condition) may be denatured, and it is precisely this feature of Rousseau’s thought that brings Emile and the Social Contract together.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that it is necessary to raise a community of Emiles if the project of founding a republic is to be made possible. Responding to the question ‘what people, then, is suited for legislation?’, Rousseau writes that it is ‘one that, though already bound by some union of origin, interest, or convention, has not yet borne the true yoke of laws’ and ‘that has neither customs nor superstitions that are deeply entrenched’ (SC II: xi, 162/OC 3, 390).² This shows that a people fit for legislation need not be one composed of individuals raised under private instruction (although such instances are extremely rare). The question here, however, is whether those raised under private instruction are precluded from becoming citizens, and if not, whether it alone is sufficient. I argue that private instruction does not preclude, but that it is also insufficient – in Emile, the essential groundwork for citizenship is prepared but it is only completed by the work of the Lawgiver in the Social Contract. In saying this, I also mean to suggest that private education can serve citizen formation. As we shall see, it does so primarily by cultivating its student’s reasoning and judging capacities, and his conscience. These qualities not only prevent arbitrary opinion from influencing his imagination and inflaming his amour-propre, they also develop the student’s sense of justice, both of which are vital to discerning the general will. Moreover, this means that the project of making citizens requires that the two forms of education proceed temporally, that is to say, education as a citizen has to take place after private education.

Crucially, then, the making of a man and citizen are in principle, not rival enterprises. Yet, what is at stake here is not just the possibility of reconciling man and citizen, but the overall coherence of Rousseau’s philosophy. On the view that one has to choose between the two forms of education, Emile and the Social Contract must be understood as competing alternatives. But in a letter addressed to Duchesne, Rousseau writes that the Social Contract ‘must pass as a sort of appendix to’ Emile, and that ‘the two together make a complete whole’ (Ellis, 1977: 1).³ Moreover, Rousseau considers his ‘three principal writings’ – Emile and the First and Second Discourse – as forming ‘a same whole’ (MB, 575/OC 1, 1136). These remarks recommend reading Emile and the Social Contract not as rival enterprises but as complementary texts that contribute to the overall unity of Rousseau’s philosophy.⁴ To understand how they may be read together, I shall begin by examining Rousseau’s account of the different forms of education.

II

Because natural man is a ‘numerical unity’ who is ‘entirely for himself’ and civil man is ‘only a fractional unity’ whose ‘value is determined by his relation to the whole’, good social institutions are those ‘that best know how to denature man, to take his absolute existence from him in order to give him a relative one and transport the I into the common unity, with the result that each individual believes himself no longer one but a part of the unity and no longer feels except within the whole’. The contrasting ends of citizen and man necessitate the contrasting forms of public and private education, with Plato’s Republic standing out as an exemplary treatise on the former. But ‘public instruction no longer exists and can no longer exist, because where there is no longer a fatherland, there can no longer be citizens’. For Rousseau, the words ‘fatherland’ (patrie) and ‘citizen’ (citoyen) ought to be ‘effaced from modern languages’ for true republics are but the faded memories of a distant past (E I, 164–165/OC 4, 249–250). This explains why the countries that Emile visits in his travels do not suffice to instruct him in citizenship: tourism cannot make a citizen, nor can mere intellectual apprehension of the principles of citizenship. If Emile’s own country is not a true fatherland, he cannot be made a citizen merely by maturing within it; still less can he be made so by travelling amongst countries that are not true fatherlands, though even if they were, he would not be made a citizen by mere travel there. In short, a system of public education is contingent on a flourishing republic. In the absence of a fatherland, no system of public education can prevail, and no true citizen can be raised.⁵

It appears, then, that one must decide upon a private education. Designed to mirror nature’s instruction, private education attempts to preserve one’s ‘original dispositions’ – the dispositions to seek or flee objects that produce sensations – from the corruption of opinion. These dispositions, initially guided by the pleasantness of the sensations produced, are subsequently directed ‘according to the conformity or lack of it that we find between us and these objects, and finally according to the judgments we make about them on the basis of the idea of happiness or of perfection given us by reason’ (E I, 163/OC 4, 248).

Private education is chiefly concerned with making its student cognizant of man’s true relations – regarding the species and himself as an individual – and with ordering ‘all the affections of the soul according to these relations’ (E IV, 370–371/OC 4, 500–501). Achieving this requires delaying the inevitable development of amour-propre, which if developed too early and under a misguided view of human relations, becomes inflamed and thus the source of moral corruption. Amour-propre should not be confused with amour de soi, which is the ‘source of our passions, the origin and principle of all the others, the only one born with man’ and ‘of which all others are in a sense only modifications’ (E IV, 363/OC 4, 491). ‘Always good and always in conformity with order’, it is self-regarding and is content upon the satisfaction of one’s authentic needs – needs relating to self-preservation (E IV, 363–364/OC 4, 491–492; SD, 91–92/OC 3, 219–220). Amour-propre is instead the desire to be respected and esteemed by others that often becomes manifest in each person’s desire ‘to claim first rank as an individual’ (SD, 44/OC 3, 166). It is ‘only a relative sentiment, artificial and born in society’ that, in making comparisons, is ‘never content and never could be, because this sentiment, preferring ourselves to others, also demands others to prefer us to themselves, which is impossible’ (E IV, 364/OC 4, 493; D, 100, 113/OC 1, 789–790, 805–807). Clearly stated, the problem with amour-propre is that ‘as soon as one adopts the habit of measuring oneself against others and moving outside oneself in order to assign oneself the first and best place, it is impossible not to develop an aversion for everything that surpasses us, everything that lowers our standing, everything that diminishes us, everything that by being something prevents us from being everything’ (D, 112/OC 1, 806). For Rousseau, ‘this is how the gentle and affectionate passions are born of self-love, and how the hateful and irascible passions are born of amour-propre’ (E IV, 364/OC 4, 493).

The transformation of amour de soi into amour-propre is not necessarily morally corrupting, however. Despite its obvious danger, amour-propre is also considered by Rousseau to be a ‘useful instrument’ that is able to produce the ‘gentle and humane’ passions of ‘beneficence and commiseration’ (E IV, 389/OC 4, 523). Elsewhere, he speaks of the love of fatherland as that which combines all ‘the force of amour-propre with all the beauty of virtue’ (PE, 151/OC 3, 255). And most emphatically, Rousseau writes that it is possible to transform this passion into a virtue by extending it to other individuals, or, more specifically, ‘transform into a sublime virtue this dangerous disposition [amour-propre] from which all our vices arise’ by directing it towards the fatherland (E IV, 409/OC 4, 547; PE, 155/OC 3, 259).⁶

For Rousseau, it is not the passions themselves, but the ‘errors of imagination which transform into vices the passions of all limited beings’. Although the ‘source of all the passions is sensibility’, it is the imagination that ‘determines their bent’. Beings who are able to sense their relations with other similar beings are affected by their understandings of these relations and changes to these understandings invariably alter the nature of such relationships. Exposed at an early age to the ‘pomp of Courts, the splendor of palaces, or the appeal of the theater’, individuals are often left with a distorted image of man’s relations. Allowing the imagination to be seduced by such illusions causes amour-propre to lead individuals astray by engendering vanity, pride and envy within their hearts, for it is ‘not in the human heart to put ourselves in the place of people who are happier than we, but only in that of those who are more pitiable’ (E IV, 373–375/OC 4, 504–506). But men are neither rich nor naturally kings, lords or courtiers. ‘All are born naked and poor; all are subject to the miseries of life, to sorrows, ills, needs, and pains of every kind. Finally, all are condemned to death’. These are, for Rousseau, enduring features of the human condition from which there is no possibility of exemption. The sociability of the human being stems from his weakness, and we ‘are attached to our fellows less by the sentiments of their pleasures than by the sentiment of their pains, for we see far better in the latter the identity of our natures with theirs and the guarantees of their attachment to us’ (E IV, 372–373/OC 4, 503–504). Because everything surrounding an individual influences his imagination such that the flood of prejudices is able to carry him away from a precise understanding of man’s true relations, it is necessary that he be given the resources required to resist these influences. Imagination, then, must neither be left without the restraints of sentiment nor reason if it is to remain free from error.

Rousseau thus devises an educational scheme which, according to Hanley’s (2012) extremely sophisticated treatment, proceeds in three stages (sensory education, judgement or reasoning, conscience and willing), each stage building on the preparatory work completed in the former.⁷ Again, its aim is to ultimately cultivate the student’s reasoning and judging capacities, and his conscience, such that he is able to see the truth of man’s relations, look past the appearances, arbitrary opinions and prejudices circulating in society, and so prevent them from influencing his imagination and inflaming his amour-propre.

Very briefly, the process begins with sensory education, as the senses are, for Rousseau, ‘the instruments of all our knowledge’ from which ‘all our ideas come, or at least all are occasioned by them’ (ML, 183–184/OC 4, 1092). Through sensation, objects are presented to us as ‘separated, isolated, such as they are in nature’, giving rise not to ideas but images, ‘absolute depictions of sensible objects’ without relational property (E IV, 430/OC 4, 571; II, 243/4, 344). Given, however, that simple and complex ideas, reflection and reasoning, all build out from the synthesis, comparison and conjunction of the materials of sensory impressions, education must watch over this stage of passive reception carefully. The goal is to present sensations to the student ‘in an appropriate order’ which ‘prepare[s] his memory to provide them one day to his understanding in the same order’ (E I, 193/OC 4, 284). Following this, the second stage focusses on cultivating judgement, the capacity to compare. From the conjunction and synthesis of several sensations, we form simple ideas, and from the conjunction and synthesis of several simple ideas, we form complex ideas. Ideas, unlike sensations, are relational. But with this relational dimension, the prospect of error is raised, since we may make erroneous judgements regarding these relations, leading to erroneous ideas. Since ideas formed on the basis of real relations make for a solid mind, and a precise mind sees relations as they are, the cultivation of judgement here involves training the pupil’s ability to compare and order the relations between sensations and ideas correctly, to see true relations as they are (E III, 353/OC 4, 481). This is an important stage in the development of the moral agent, since amour-propre is itself a comparative sentiment, and whether it becomes inflamed or not is contingent on our capacity to judge, and judge human relations accurately.

The third stage involves transferring the student’s ‘cultivated capacity for the judgment of physical relations to the judgment of moral relations; indeed Rousseau is explicit in insisting that the study of “real material relations” is the necessary preparative for “bringing him ever closer to the great relations he must know one day in order to judge well of the good and bad order of civil society”’ (Hanley, 2012: 255). To cultivate Emile’s reason and judgement of human relations, Rousseau turns to history, specifically Plutarch. Why? Because the attempt to understand moral relations only through actual experiences in a corrupt environment leads quickly to deception, and ‘if men deceive [Emile], he will hate them; but if, respected by them, he sees them deceive one another mutually, he will pity them’. History allows Emile to ‘read the hearts of men’ and see them as ‘a simple spectator, disinterested and without passion, as their judge and not as their accomplice or as their accuser’ (E IV, 391–392/OC 4, 526). Through this cultivation of reasoning applied to moral relations, Emile is brought to understand man’s true relations and to know of good and bad, concomitantly developing his sentiment of conscience, ‘an innate principle of justice and virtue according to which, in spite of our own maxims, we judge our actions and those of others as good or bad’ (E IV, 452/OC 4, 598; ML, 198/OC 4, 1112–1113).⁸ Although conscience is here described as innate, elsewhere Rousseau says:

Conscience develops and acts only with man’s understanding. It is only through this understanding that he attains a knowledge of order, and it is only when he knows order that his conscience brings him to love it. Conscience is therefore null in the man who has compared nothing and who has not seen his relationships. (LB, 28/OC 4, 936)

Conscience develops with reason because it is through reason that we compare and order relations, and thus come to know of good and bad (when applied to human relations and assuming a successful education), which conscience then loves and hates, respectively. Once this love of order and justice is cultivated, it in turn acts as a check on reason, preventing it from being led astray by the passions.⁹ We will come back to the relationship between reason and conscience, and the general will, later in the following section. But for now, let us turn to the figure of the Lawgiver to see why private instruction alone cannot form ideal citizens.

III

Discovering the ‘best rules of society suited to Nations’ requires a ‘superior intelligence’ who sees ‘all of men’s passions yet experienced none of them; who had no relationship at all to our nature yet knew it thoroughly; whose happiness was independent of us, yet who was nevertheless willing to attend to ours’ (SC II: vii, 154/OC 3, 381). This enlightened Lawgiver is needed as a ‘blind multitude, which often does not know what it wants because it rarely knows what is good for it’, is incapable of performing ‘an undertaking as vast and as difficult as a system of legislation’ without first being cognizant of its corporate will. People must be guided to will ‘the good it does not see’ and ‘be taught to know what it wants’ (SC II: vi, 154/OC 3, 380). In other words, Rousseau is fully aware that for ‘a nascent people to appreciate the healthy maxims of politics, and follow the fundamental rules of reason of Statecraft’ in the absence of a Lawgiver, ‘the effect would have to become the cause; the social spirit, which is to be the work of the institution, would have to preside over the institution itself, and men would have to be prior to laws what they ought to become by means of them’ (SC II: vii, 156/OC 3, 383).

The Législateur must ‘feel capable of changing human nature, so to speak; of transforming each individual, who by himself is a perfect and solitary whole, into a part of a larger whole from which this individual receives, in a sense, his life and his being’. He must be able to alter ‘man’s constitution in order to strengthen it’ and substitute ‘a partial and moral existence for the physical and independent existence we have all received from nature’ (SC II: vii, 155/OC 3, 381). A careful reading of this passage reveals that the individual who can be denatured cannot be the civil man of modern societies. He must be a ‘perfect and solitary whole’ who draws the sentiment of his existence independently. But civil man, as Rousseau observes, always lives ‘outside of himself’ and ‘knows how to live only in the opinion of others; and it is, so to speak, from their judgment alone that he draws the sentiment of his own existence’ (SD, 66/OC 3, 193, emphasis added).

Living exclusively in the opinions of others is a sign of moral corruption from which recovery is impossible. ‘No one has ever seen a corrupted people return to virtue. You may pretend to destroy the sources of the disease, but to no avail … You may restore men to the primordial condition of equality, but in vain … their hearts, once spoiled, will remain so always’ (OC 3, 233; Starobinski, 2006: 343). Similar to men, peoples are ‘docile only in their youth’ and become incorrigible with age. And ‘once customs are established and prejudices have taken root, it is a dangerous and vain undertaking to want to reform them’ (SC II: viii, 157/OC 3, 385). It is this corruption that prevents the ties of citizenship from being cultivated and established in the hearts of men: ‘how could the love of fatherland develop in the midst of so many other passions stifling it? And what is left for fellow citizens of a heart already divided between greed, a mistress, and vanity?’ (PE, 155/OC 3, 260).

Thus understood, raising individuals under a system of private instruction does not preclude their transformation into citizens, but makes such a transformation possible. Because it prevents men from becoming enslaved by arbitrary opinion, private education forms men who can be denatured by a Lawgiver. Crucially, the Lawgiver can denature but cannot uncorrupt, and his presence is a necessary but insufficient condition for the successful founding of a republic. As Rousseau notes, ‘what makes success so rare is the impossibility of finding the simplicity of nature together with the needs of society’ (SC II: x, 162/OC 3, 391). Equally important, citizenship consists in making an individual a part of a larger whole from which he receives his life and his being. Yet private education is conducted without relating its student to this whole according to the requisites of citizenship, thus making it impossible for those raised under its instruction to become cognizant of the general will. Emile’s education does not make him the ideal citizen, but it does make him the perfect candidate to become one.

A significant aspect of the Lawgiver’s work involves making a people cognizant of its volonté générale by way of strengthening moeurs and initiating laws reflective of this will. Despite its importance, the general will is never explicitly defined by Rousseau (Ripstein, 1999: 220).¹⁰ Yet, understanding the general will and the Lawgiver’s role in making individuals cognizant of it is crucial to understanding why private education cannot make ideal citizens, and since it is the legislative expression of the Sovereign, I shall begin with the latter concept.

The Sovereign is a moral being ‘to whom the social pact gave existence, and all of whose wills bear the name of laws’ (SW, 73/OC 3, 608). Sovereignty lies with the people – the body politic composed of citizens joined in a social compact. The government is merely the executive branch of the state, tasked with the interpretation and execution of the laws defined by a general will expressed through the legislative powers of the Sovereign. The general will, which tends to the common good, must not be confused with the will of all, which is merely the sum of individual preferences that ‘considers [only] private interest’ (SC II: iii, 147/OC 3, 371). The rectitude and generality of the laws are preserved only when they issue from and apply to all. The laws are articulated through the private deliberation of citizens who are asked not for their approval or disapproval of initiatives raised in the assembly specifically but, rather, if the proposed laws conform to the general will ‘that is theirs’ (SC IV: ii, 201/OC 3, 441).

There are two reasons why voting in accordance with the general will does not result in the sacrifice of either personal interest or volition. First, the general will is a reflection of the common good which, by virtue of being common, is one that we all share in. In Rousseau’s words, ‘let us not forget that the public good ought to be the good of all in something or it is a word void of meaning’ (PF, 41/OC 3, 511, emphasis added). Second, the general will ‘is not some mystical faculty of a collectivity that exists independently of the individual wills of its members’ (Noone, 1980: 73). Rather ‘each individual can, as a man, have a private will contrary to or differing from the general will he has as a Citizen’, and when ‘subjects are subordinated’ to the general will, ‘they do not obey anyone, but solely their own will’ (SC I: vii, 140–141, II: iv, 150/OC 3, 363, 375). More expressly, Rousseau remarks that ‘one is free although subjected to laws, and not when one obeys a man, because in the latter case I obey the will of another, but when I obey the law, I only obey the public will which is mine as much as anyone else’s’ (PF, 28/OC 3, 492).

In authentic acts of legislation, a citizen does not vote for all by voting for himself, but votes for himself by voting for all.¹¹ This is possible because, for Rousseau, ‘our sweetest existence is relative and collective, and our true self is not entirely within us’ (D, 118/OC 1, 813). To become cognizant of the general will, however, each individual must be denatured to the extent that he ‘receives, in a sense, his life and his being’ from the ‘larger whole’ (SC II: vii, 155/OC 3, 381). Each must no longer feel ‘except within the whole’ and it is only when ‘each Citizen is nothing, and can do nothing, except with all the others, and if the force acquired by the whole is equal or superior to the sum of the natural forces of all the individuals’, that legislation may be said to have reached ‘its highest possible point of perfection’ (SC II: vii, 155/OC 3, 382; E I, 164/OC 4, 249). The social bond underlines each citizen’s ability to discern the general will. And when ‘the social bond is broken in all hearts … the general will becomes mute’ (SC IV: i, 198/OC 3, 438). From this, it may also be said that the general will remains mute in the absence of this bond. The office of the Lawgiver, tasked with engendering civic virtue and corporate unity, is therefore fundamental to the making of citizens capable of discerning the general will.

Relatedly, the general will is also often presented as a purely rational will (in the sense that its content can be apprehended, known or discerned through reason alone), but this is not the case. In citing Rousseau’s discussion of the general will in the Geneva Manuscript, for example, Neuhouser (2008: 195–196) writes that ‘we are told’ that ‘discerning the general will is an act of the understanding that takes place in the silence of the passions’ (GM, 80/OC 3, 286). Notably, Rousseau is here quoting Diderot’s definition of the general will in his Encyclopédie article on natural right.¹² More importantly, Rousseau immediately follows this quotation by questioning it, asking: ‘but where is the man who can thus separate himself from himself and, if concern for his self-preservation is nature’s first precept, can he be forced thus to look at the species in general in order to impose on himself duties whose connection with his particular constitution he does not see? (GM, 80/OC 3, 286)’.

Crucially for Rousseau, ‘the mistake of most moralists has always been to consider man as an essentially reasonable being. Man is a sensitive being, who consults solely his passions in order to act, and for whom reason serves only to palliate the follies his passions lead him to commit’ (PF, 70/OC 3, 554). Elsewhere, he stresses that ‘sensitivity is the principle of all action’ and that it is ‘passion’ that ‘leads us’ (D, 112/OC 1, 805). In his most explicit statement relating the will to affect, Rousseau writes that ‘reason chooses the feeling’ that the ‘heart prefers’ in ‘all deliberations where judgment is not enlightened enough to reach a decision without the help of the will’ (D, 170/OC 1, 879). Notably, ‘we cannot philosophize with so much disinterestedness that our will does not have a little influence over our opinions’ (LF, 262/OC 4, 1137).

In an ideal republic, the common good is ‘clear and luminous’, ‘clearly apparent everywhere, and requires only a good sense to be perceived’ (SC IV: i, 198/OC 3, 437). Cognizance of the general will is not the result of a purely ratiocinative process, but is instead the result of a combination of judgement and feeling accessible to all. Lawmaking forces each citizen to ‘act upon other principles and to consult his reason before heeding his inclinations’, but does not demand that reason be consulted instead of inclination (SC I: viii, 141/OC 3, 364). Following Kaufman (1997), Putterman (2010) suggests that reason acts as a corrective to the passions, but does not supplant them. As he describes it, ‘the tension between passion and reason during lawmaking’ is ‘resolvable to the extent that the latter acts to universalize the particularity of the former to make the laws moral’ (Putterman, 2010: 18).

Yet, it would appear that reason cannot universalise the passions without being undergirded by sentiment and a sincere love for one’s fellow citizens. In his discussion of natural law, for example, Rousseau argues that ‘even the precept of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us has no true foundation other than conscience and sentiment; for where is the precise reason for me, being myself, to act as if I were another, especially when I am morally certain of never finding myself in the same situation?’ (E IV, 389/OC 4, 523). More emphatically, he asserts that ‘by reason alone, independent of conscience, no natural law can be established’ and that ‘if natural law were written only in human reason it would hardly be capable of directing the majority of our actions, but it is also engraved in man’s heart in indelible characters and it is there that it speaks more strongly than do all the precepts of Philosophers’ (E IV, 389/OC 4, 523; SW, 65/OC 3, 602). Here, Rousseau is making two distinct but related claims. The first is that natural law has its foundations partly in sentiment. In saying this, Rousseau is not simply suggesting that we cannot be motivated to act in accordance with the precepts of natural law by reason alone. He is making the deeper claim that we would not be able to conceive of natural law (as commanding us to do or to forbear from doing something) if we were not beings of sentiment capable putting ourselves in the place of another, where this capacity does not stem merely from a fear that one could actually, and on some future occasion, find oneself in a situation that presently afflicts another. To put it differently, discerning and grasping the meaning of moral commands – having these commands ‘make sense’ to us as moral commands at all – requires being in a kind of affective state underwritten by sentiment and conscience, because they not only enable us to put ourselves in the place of another, they also enable us to discern what is morally required of us, or understand why a moral command holds (and does still apply to us), in situations we are certain never to find ourselves in. The second is that reason alone is incapable of motivating individuals to act in accordance with natural law. If this is true, it would seem natural to conclude that reason alone cannot move citizens to legislate in accordance with the general will, for what would the precise reason be for each individual to vote in accordance with the common good especially when doing so may be antithetical to the individual’s particular interest? Building on Putterman’s point, then, one can agree that reason is able to universalise the particularity of the passions to make the laws moral, but it cannot itself provide the grounds for the activity of universalising the passions.

Rousseau is clearly critical of the appeal to reason exclusively as a solution to our modern afflictions. Not only does he claim that ‘one of the errors of our age is to use reason in too unadorned a form, as if men were all mind’ and that ‘reason alone is not active … it sometimes restrains, it arouses rarely, and it has never done anything great’, he also writes that ‘with all their morality men would never have been anything but monsters if Nature had not given them pity in support of reason’ (E IV, 490/OC 4, 645; SD, 37/OC 3, 155). Reason itself is often fallible and an important part of Rousseau’s philosophy involves teaching men ‘to return into their own hearts to rediscover the seed of the social virtues they stifle under a false semblance in the misunderstood progress of society’ and to always ‘consult their conscience to redress the errors of their reason’ (D, 22/OC 1, 687, emphasis added).

Despite avoiding all mention of ‘conscience’ in the Social Contract, it appears unlikely that Rousseau would turn exclusively to reason to discover the general will. Conscience may be an affect, but we must not confuse ‘the secret penchants of our heart which lead us astray, with this even more secret, more internal, dictamen which entreats and murmurs against these self-interested decisions, and leads us back in spite of ourselves onto the road of truth’ (LF, 263/OC 4, 1138). This internal sentiment ‘is an appeal on its part against the sophisms of reason, and what proves it is that it never speaks more strongly than when our will yields most obligingly to judgments that this sentiment persists in rejecting’ (LF, 263/OC 4, 1138). It is ‘the light of our feeble understanding’ that ‘never misleads us’. And it is that which ‘recalls to the bosom of truth and of virtue every man whose badly conducted reason leads astray’ (LF, 263–264/OC 4, 1138; E IV, 449/OC 4, 594).

This said, Rousseau does write that man ‘has, in a cultivated reason, only what is necessary for him to live in society’ (SD, 34/OC 3, 152). It is tempting to conclude from this that the general will is a wholly rational will. But even here, Rousseau references not reason simply, but cultivated reason (raison cultivée). In my view, cultivated reason refers specifically to reason guided by conscience. In Rousseau’s account of the latter as articulated through the Savoyard Vicar, he proclaims that ‘without you [conscience] I sense nothing in me that raises me above the beasts, other than the sad privilege of leading myself astray from error to error with the aid of an understanding without rule and a reason without principle’ (E IV, 454/OC 4, 601, emphasis added).¹³ Cultivated reason cannot therefore refer to reason exclusively but must refer to reason guided by conscience. In speaking of consulting one’s reason before listening to one’s inclinations in the Social Contract, then, Rousseau must be referring to this particular understanding of reason (cultivated reason). To put it differently, when each citizen votes in accordance with the general will, he substitutes ‘justice for instinct in his conduct’ and endows ‘his actions with the morality they previously lacked’ (SC I: viii, 141/OC 3, 364). Yet, Rousseau is clear that ‘justice and goodness are not merely abstract words – pure moral beings formed by the understanding – but are true affections of the soul enlightened by reason’ (E IV, 389/OC 4, 522–523). Significantly, conscience is regarded by Rousseau to be the ‘voice of the soul’ in contrast to the passions, which are ‘voice of the body’ (E 449/OC 4, 594). This explains, perhaps, why conscience is not textually present in the Social Contract – in speaking of reason, Rousseau is pointing specifically to its cultivated form, one that already presupposes the presence of conscience as its guiding principle. Reinforcing this is Rousseau’s claim that the Social Contract ought to be understood as an appendix to Emile and that together the two form a complete whole. As an appendix, any mention of reason in this text ought to be referenced against what Rousseau says in Emile. It follows that reason in the Social Contract cannot be the unprincipled reason that Rousseau rebukes, but must be the principled reason he praises there, which is reason guided by conscience.

Rousseau thus presents a sophisticated solution to the problem of modern civil arrangements. He departs from the simple contrast of having reason redeem men from the corruptive sway of the affects. Although each may take on corrupted forms, both are necessary for virtuous citizenship. Ideally, each would serve as a corrective to the other when attempts at determining the public will are made. Although rare, unanimity in legislative decision making is possible not because reason is consulted exclusively, but because affect is also present in any introspective deliberation.¹⁴ It is from this complex interplay of love of one’s fellow citizens, the sentiment of conscience, self-love and reason that the public will is made discernible. This complex relationship may be restated this way: reason and passion are both constitutive elements of the general will. Reason universalises the particularity of the passions to make the laws moral. Reason, however, is not simply unprincipled rationality, but one guided by conscience. And it is the underlying love of one’s fellow citizens that motivates each citizen to reason in a way that universalises the passions.

The preceding discussion can be summarised in the following three conclusions. First, if conscience is the principle of justice that serves as reason’s guide and prevents it from going astray, a private education that instructs its student to consult both reason and conscience will support, rather than oppose, his ability to discern the general will. Cognizance of a people’s volonté générale requires the exercise of principled reason; as Rousseau describes it, ‘it is only necessary to be just’ to be ‘assured of following the general will’ (PE, 148/OC 3, 251). Second, because private education prevents the inflammation of amour-propre thereby safeguarding individuals from the corrupting sway of the passions, it enables the voice of conscience to be heard clearly by those raised under its methods. Although conscience ‘speaks to all hearts’, few are able to hear it for it ‘speaks to us in nature’s language which everything has made us forget’. The ‘noisy voices’ of prejudice ‘stifle its voice and prevent it from making itself heard’ (ML, 198/OC 4, 1112; E IV, 454/OC 4, 601). Private education, however, makes it possible for conscience to be heard. And third, if the presence of a social bond is necessary for discerning the general will, and if it is the Lawgiver who is tasked with the responsibility of forming civic virtue and corporate identity, private education alone cannot perform the function of making citizens. As we shall see, the fostering of corporate unity and the edification of a people’s moeurs through the initiation of laws that attend to all the particular features of a nascent people are amongst the most important aspects of the Lawgiver’s work, without which the voice of the general will can only remain silent.

First amongst the Lawgiver’s duties is to ‘make the laws conform to the general will’ (PE, 147/OC 3, 250). Rousseau rejects Diderot’s assertion that there exists a universal general will, arguing instead that the general will of each people is unique. ‘Apart from the maxims common to all, each people contains within itself some cause that organizes it in a particular manner and renders its legislation appropriate for it alone’ (SC II: xi, 163/OC 3, 393). Although ‘the institution of laws is not such a marvelous thing that any man of sense and equity could not easily find those which, well observed, would be the most beneficial for society’, ‘the problem is to adapt this code to the People for which it is made’. It is less about establishing ‘the best laws in themselves than the best of which it admits in the given situation’ (LA, 299/OC 5, 60). This explains why the Lawgiver must attend to ‘all that is required by the location, climate, soil, morals, surroundings, and all the particular relationships of the people he was to institute’ (PE, 147/OC 3, 250). The general will of a people is, as such, an organic will that is not grounded on reason alone. Without the Lawgiver’s expertise in attending to these requirements, the successful founding of a republic remains impossible.

For Rousseau, he who ‘drafts the laws’ possesses no legislative right and the office that ‘constitutes the republic does not enter into its constitution’ (SC II: vii, 155–156/OC 3, 383). The Lawgiver’s task lies in initiating laws that mirror the general will, with ratification remaining the prerogative of the sovereign solely. Voting on the laws contributes, in part, to the development of civic virtue and corporate identity, and it is owing to this limitation of the Lawgiver’s powers that claims of social engineering and indoctrination may be refuted. As Putterman (2010: 77) remarks, ‘whatever “will-formation” does exist in Rousseau’s legitimate state can be said to be too uncertain to determine or decide the outcome of the vote predictably … Beyond the creating of an entrenched social and political identity there is no effort to secure any distinctive content to the body of the laws’.

Alone, the act of lawmaking can neither make individuals cognizant of the general will nor ensure that voting proceeds from a ‘disposition to be just’ (Kelly, 1987: 323). Although legislative decision making procedurally imposes demands on citizens to consider all who are affected by the laws eventuating in the development of citizens’ perceptions of justice, citizens cannot be moved, at least initially, to vote wisely simply by way of these procedural constraints. In a different vein, even well-disposed individuals may have difficulty discerning the general will owing to its organic nature. On its own, having a disposition to be just cannot guarantee cognizance of corporate identity and will. Crucially, Rousseau does not believe that reason alone is capable of forming civic identity. The Lawgiver can therefore rely on neither force to compel nor reason to convince individuals to act in accordance with the public will (Kelly, 1987: 323–324). Instead, he must ‘have recourse to another order of authority, which can win over without violence and persuade without convincing’ (SC II: vii, 156/OC 3, 383). This authority is religion.

It is ‘in order to win over’ those ‘who cannot be moved by human prudence’ that the Lawgiver turns to ‘divine authority’ to attain his goal. By setting words ‘in the mouth of the immortals’, the Lawgiver is able to move individuals to place the common good above their particular interests and foster corporate unity by engendering the ‘sentiments of sociability without which it is impossible to be a good Citizen or a faithful subject’ (SC II: vii, 156–157/OC 3, 383–384; IV: viii, 222/OC 3, 468).¹⁵ Furthermore, religion makes it possible for individuals to ‘obey with freedom and bear with docility the yoke of public felicity’, tempering any difficulty they have in ‘perceiving the advantages’ they ‘should obtain from the continual deprivations imposed by good laws’. Yet it is ‘not every man who can make the Gods speak or be believed when he declares himself their interpreter’. For anyone can ‘engrave stone tablets, buy an oracle, pretend to have a secret relationship with some divinity, train a bird to talk in his ear, or find other crude ways to impress the people’ (SC II: vii, 156–157/OC 3, 383–384). Employing such methods will, at best, ‘succeed in assembling a crowd of madmen’ who will ‘die along’ with the fraudulent Lawgiver rather than persist to bring him glory in the progress of times (SC II: vii, 157/OC 3, 384).

The authority of miracles is ‘based only on the ignorance of those for whom they were performed’ (LWM, 177/OC 3, 742). Miracles cannot be relied upon to fashion civic unity because ‘false tricks can form [only] a fleeting bond’; it is ‘wisdom alone [that] can make it durable’. Consequently, it is the ‘Legislator’s great soul [that] is the true miracle that should prove his mission’ (SC II: vii, 157/OC 3, 384). It is by way of a combination of a Lawgiver’s ‘veracity’, ‘justice’, ‘pure and spotless morals’, ‘virtues inaccessible to the human passions’, ‘along with the qualities of understanding, reason, mind, knowledge, [and] prudence’ that persuasion can be made successful (LWM, 167/OC 3, 728). Or, as Kelly (1987: 325) describes it, ‘the perception of the legislator’s soul secures consent for his institutions and a disposition to follow them’.

It may be said that my earlier presentation of the Lawgiver as tailoring the laws to the general will does not do justice to this discussion of the role of civil religion in Rousseau’s republican thought. Surely the Lawgiver is shaping the customs and mores themselves directly from which the general will eventually flows, rather than simply taking the latter as he finds it and tailoring laws to fit. It is true that the Lawgiver involves himself in the shaping of customs and mores, but whatever shaping the Lawgiver engages in must be referenced against his (apparently) accurate understanding of what the general will of the people he is tasked to institute consists in. The Lawgiver’s work does not result in the creation of a general will but, importantly, results in making a people cognizant of this will by way of fostering an entrenched corporate identity. In other words, by playing on the people’s sentiments and emotions, this wise institution aims to unify the citizenry, making every individual aware of the general will that only he, supposedly, with his wisdom and intellectual distance as a foreigner, is able to perceive before a people’s corporate identity becomes fully apparent to them.¹⁶

Using religion to make each individual believe ‘himself no longer one but a part of the unity’ must be distinguished from the idea that the citizen lives only in the opinion of others. Just as a father who feels that his self is made whole only by virtue of his children does not live in their opinions, a citizen who feels whole only within the body politic does not necessarily live in the opinions of his fellow citizens. The wise use of religion by the Lawgiver creates an environment where citizens ‘willingly want what is wanted by’ the people they love, which Rousseau associates with the conforming ‘of private wills on all matters with the general will’ (compare PF, 59/OC 3, 536; PE, 151/OC 3, 254). Yet, Rousseau does speak of opinion as fundamental to the continued success of the state: it is a part of the laws ‘on which the success of all the others [laws] depends’ and ‘to which the great Legislator attends in secret whilst appearing to limit himself to the particular regulations that are merely the sides of the arch of which morals, slower to arise, form at last the unshakeable Keystone’ (SC II: xii, 164–165/OC 3, 394).

Because opinion, above all, forms a part of the laws on which the success of all the others depends, the Lawgiver’s role in engraving it in the hearts of citizens is crucial to the (founding and) flourishing of a republic. Reason and passion may compose the general will, but it is opinion that decides if the laws are obeyed. For Rousseau, it is useless to distinguish ‘between the morals of a nation and the objects of its esteem … Amongst all peoples of the world, it is not nature, but opinion [that] determines the choice of their pleasures’. Although ‘one always likes what is beautiful or what one finds to be so’, one is often mistaken in this judgement and it is therefore this judgement that must be regulated (SC IV: vii, 214–215/OC 3, 458–459).

‘Neither reason, nor virtue, nor laws will vanquish public opinion’, and force itself is powerless to change it. As the ‘queen of the world’, it is ‘not subject to the power of Kings’ for ‘they are themselves her first slaves’ (LA, 302–305/OC 5, 64–68). But how are citizens to avoid being subjected to the will of another when public opinion is to be engraved into their hearts by the secret acts of the Lawgiver? Rousseau’s solution lies in this: in a well-organised state, public opinion ought to mirror the general will. When opinion tracks the general will, it is not arbitrary and individuals do not live according to the preferences of others but only their own. It is only in conventional or ‘corrupt’ societies that men find themselves living according to the arbitrary views of others. Public opinion in an ideal republic does not reflect the interests or views of any particular association or individual but only the general will, and in yielding to it, each citizen merely professes to follow his own will. Each therefore still embodies ‘a certain version of the ideal of self-sufficiency that defines men: the freedom to “see with one’s own eyes,” to “feel with one’s own heart,” to be governed only by “one’s own reason” rather than being compelled always to conduct oneself, or to judge, as others see fit’.

IV

This paper has shown that contrary to Neuhouser’s view, there is little evidence to suggest that Emile becomes a fully formed citizen at the end of his education. Neither travel nor academic study are sufficient for making a citizen and, as Rousseau remarks, Emile’s education will first and foremost make him a man upon its completion. But rather than force us to choose between raising a man and a citizen, Rousseau constructs a model of private education that allows for the making of citizens by ensuring that its students are not susceptible to the corrupting sway of the passions. Given the condition of individuals in modern societies and the absence of fatherlands, citizens can only be made out of men untouched by the vagaries of opinion, or again, by men who are not (already) enslaved by an inflamed amour-propre. Emile’s education performs this function, thereby making his transformation into a citizen possible. Moreover, private education teaches its student to consult both his reason and his conscience, elements crucial to any attempt at discerning the general will.

Although Neuhouser is indeed correct to argue for a successive system of education, the making of a citizen is not completed in Emile but extends into the Social Contract. His account diminishes the crucial role the Lawgiver plays in fashioning citizens capable of discerning the general will. The cognizance of a people’s volonté générale requires that the social bond be established in all hearts. In its absence, the general will remains silent. Private education, conducted without relating its student to the whole according to the demands of citizenship, does not establish the social bond required for its students to become cognizant of this will.

By strengthening moeurs and initiating laws reflective of the volonté générale of the people he is tasked to institute, the Lawgiver inculcates civic virtue and corporate identity thus enabling the people to become cognizant of their corporate will. And it is by relying on religion, attending to all the particular features of a people and engraving morals, customs and opinion in their hearts that the Lawgiver is able to guide them in performing the great and difficult undertaking of establishing a system of legislation that is suited to them alone.¹⁷

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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